Instant Karma

George Tenet has a new book out. He should have called it, Poor Me, I am a Wuss Who Wants Everyone to Like Me.

It has been "pretty well confirmed" that this administration lied to get us into war. The only people who support the President are just a few dead enders who are in their last throes. It's a slam dunk that Mr. Bush will be viewed as our worst president ever. The smoking gun is the lack of a mushroom cloud since Saddam had no WMD, no ties to al Qaida and there was no reason to invade. We went to war with the administration we had instead of the administration we would like to have had. Incompetence thy name is Bush.

Because we could have won. But because of the incompetence of Bush & Co. and the disasterous mistakes (disbanding the army, de-Batthification, allowing the looting, appointing cronies instead of competence, ignoring the insurgence, not listening the "generals on the ground" who said we needed more troops) we are stuck. And an aside on the phrase "mistakes were made" - please GOD - mistakes were made, indeed. Using the passive voice as though the Keebler Elves are at fault.

Meanwhile, here we are; stuck in a quagmire that is worse than Vietnam. Because unlike Vietnam we didn't take over for the French, we started it. And at the risk of losing all my liberal street cred, we have to finish it. I'm not worried about the terrorists "following us home" like some lost puppy. They're already willing to follow us home whether we're in Iraq or not. I'm more concerned with the damage we have done to a country and their people. We have had five years to create a generation of kids who will hate us forever.

When I lived in Germany I met a man who said he would love America forever because of the Marshall plan and the Hershey chocolate. Granted, when I was there we were not tremendously popular since the largest concentration of American's outside the U.S. were living in Kaiserslautern and support the troops or not they didn't always make themselves shine in the eyes of the Germans. Not learning the language, a bit of arrogance and basically young kids drinking great German beer doesn't show us for the best we can be. However, Germany never started another war and they haven't followed us home to kill us. We rebuilt their country even though they started the war. How smart were we? And I can tell you from my hero, Howard Cavanaugh who was with Patten, that when we rebuilt Munich they brought out plans from the fifteenth century and said, this is what we need. And we did it.

Not to sound too John Lennon-ish but imagine if we took that $100 billion that Bush wants for the troops and used if for re-construction. We hired Iraqis to do the work and got rid of Halliburton. We worked with the Iraqis to give them back their country and their honor.

You can say I'm a dreamer. But I'm a dreamer who loves my country and our constitution and our ideals. I want them back.